we are all coins that can be turned to show one face or the other, or both at once as we spin.

Excellent review, great line (one of many) -- a line that all by itself forcefully reminded me of and illuminated a pivotal moment in the Ægypt cycle, where the dead-eyed counterman at a Conurbana drugstore soda fountain flips a quarter in change through the air at Pierce Moffett, and Pierce, tracking the spinning quarter's arc, watches open-mouthed as, for a second split wide, it stops spinning and hangs frozen in the air, before just as suddenly reacquiring its spin to land loudly on the countertop -- and I knew when I first read it that the entire four-volume novel pivots around that very moment, and however much my certainty as to that fact has never since been so great, the positively hair-raising sensation I had in that moment ranks amongst the most profound of all my readerly experiences. And all in a rush you brought it back, and I saw the many flung coins of light flashing free of that singular spinning coin in a whole new way. "Thank you" doesn't even begin to say it.